As most people know by now, Rogue One quite literally brought a classic Star Wars character back to life through digital recreation, which was undeniably groundbreaking but also somewhat controversial. But for those who thought that was in poor taste, there were also a couple of OT characters who were resuscitated in much more natural ways: previously unused footage from A New Hope.

In the final battle of Rogue One, a couple of familiar faces showed up—pilots Jon Vander and Garven Dreis (Gold Leader and Red Leader). Amazingly, these characters weren't digitally recreated like Grand Moff Tarkin, but were revived using footage that had been shot but had never been used in A New Hope.

Gareth Edwards recounted to The Radio Times that he happened to stumble upon the footage while doing research for the film at Skywalker Ranch:

"We went to Skywalker ranch, and there's the archives there," Edwards told RadioTimes.com. "And as we're walking around, and doing all the cool things and looking at the Millennium Falcon and trying on Han Solo's jacket and things like that, in the back at the bottom was all these cans of film. And we said 'what are they?' and they said 'Oh, it's Star Wars.'"

The footage wasn't digitized, but Edwards managed to find the negatives and used the previously unseen footage in his film, including a few lines from the pilots that had never been heard before.

"We got the neg documents and found the clips from A New Hope that hadn't been used," he said. "And there's pilot photography and lines that were never featured in A New Hope."

This is a great Easter egg, one that serves as a beautiful transition between Rogue One and A New Hope. A few elements of Rogue One might be proving controversial among fans so far, but callbacks to the original trilogy are pretty much always welcome.